The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence

Explore the convergence of psychological healing and spiritual awakening that happens most clearly and powerfully in the depths of the heart.

The great human quest is to discover who we really are—a discovery that changes our lives and the lives of those around us. With The Deep Heart, spiritual teacher and psychotherapist John J. Prendergast, PhD, invites you on a pilgrimage within, using the heart as a portal to your deepest psychological and spiritual nature.

The “deep heart” is Prendergast’s term for the subtle center of emotional and energetic sensitivity, relational intimacy, profound inner knowing, and wholeness found within our hearts. In this experiential guide, Prendergast offers precise and potent meditative inquiries to help you open your heart, see through your core limiting beliefs, and discover the true nature of your being.

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Endorsements

“The Deep Heart is what I call a living book, that rare gem of a book that is alive with the presence of its author . . . A book like this should be felt and experienced as much as it should be read.”
–Adyashanti, teacher and author of Falling into Grace, Losing Your World, and Emptiness Dancing

“The Deep Heart is an invitation to discover our sacred calling and unveil the core of our very being. Tapping into our natural curiosity and wisdom, John Prendergast guides us on a transformational journey from head to heart—and to the full and pure essence of love.”
–Tara Brach, PhD, teacher and author of Radical Acceptance

“With tender clarity, John Prendergast draws us deeper on every page. A master teacher and beautiful writer, he lays out a clear path to our true home, and then walks it with us with practical heartfelt suggestions. This book is profound, powerful, and true. What a gem.”
–Rick Hanson, PhD, teacher and author of Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom and Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence

“A book of great wisdom and heart from an authentic and experienced teacher of Presence. John’s wise, loving, and deeply insightful words about meeting our raw experience with honesty, courage, and grace will be of immense benefit to people all over the world.”
–Jeff Foster, teacher and author of The Way of Rest and The Joy of True Meditation

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In Touch:

How to Tune in to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself

Your body has a natural sense of truth. We can feel authenticity in ourselves and in others. However, this innate wisdom is obscured by our conditioning-the core limiting beliefs, reactive feelings, and somatic contractions that fuel our sense of struggle and veil who we really are.

In Touch is a groundbreaking, experiential guide to the felt-sense of our “inner knowing”-the deep intelligence available through our bodies. Each chapter presents moving stories, helpful insights from spirituality, psychology, and science, and simple yet potent experiments for integrating the gifts of inner knowing into every aspect of daily life. Join pioneering psychotherapist and teacher Dr. John J. Prendergast to explore:

• The phenomenon of “attunement”-how we accurately sense and resonate with ourselves and others-including an introduction to attachment theory, mirror neurons, and interoception (the ability to sense into the interior of your body)
• Felt-sensing and the subtle body-our ability to have a whole-body sense of reality and how the seven major energy centers relate to common psychospiritual issues
• “Shadows as portals”-how our dark and painful feelings and sensations can point us toward an essential radiance within
• The art of identifying and undoing our core limiting beliefs
• The four somatic qualities of inner knowing-relaxed groundedness, inner alignment, open-heartedness, and spaciousness-and how these subtle signals, once recognized, can guide our choices and help us to navigate life’s challenges
• The fruits of inner knowing-the realization of who we are in our depths and the great intimacy with life we can all enjoy

“As we tune into our deepest nature, our body relaxes, grounds, lines up, opens up, and lights up,” writes Prendergast. “So far this extraordinarily useful subtle feedback has been largely overlooked; almost nothing has been written about it. We need to both sense and decode these signals if we are to benefit from them. These bodily markers are here to be seen and used as guides to enable us to more gracefully navigate life and to awaken. They are part of our birthright, available to anyone.”

Here is his invitation to start listening in a profound new way, deeply in touch with reality and our shared journey of awakening.

Endorsements

“In Touch is a wonderful read. John Prendergast is a gifted guide who puts the invisible inner knowing into clear words and simple effective practices. This book offers us a map, deep insights and methods to discover the wholeness, intimacy and wisdom that is already within us.”
–Loch Kelly, M.Div, LCSW author of Shift Into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness

“Soak in these words of wisdom and you may just find your “self” opening to the exciting liberation that emerges when inner and interconnected self are integrated into a coherent, flourishing whole.”
— Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. , Director, Mindsight Institute and Clinical Professor, UCLA School of Medicine, Author:  Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation; Brainstorm: The power and purpose of the teenage brain

“Reading In Touch is a remarkable journey through the body into a wholeness of Being.  A gifted clinician and dedicated spiritual practitioner, John Prendergast guides us in a powerful process of inner attunement, one that unfolds into deep realization and full, embodied aliveness.”
— Tara Brach, Ph.D.  author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge

“A remarkable book: John Prendergast’s lifetime experience both as a psychotherapist and a spiritual practitioner gives us a much needed map to explore our inner experience through listening to the signals of the physical body; a map that can guide us to a profound intimacy with ourselves and our own deep knowing.”
— Roger Housden, author of Keeping the Faith Without a Religion

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Sacred Mirror:

Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy

How is modern psychotherapy impacted when it is approached from the presence and understanding of the unconditioned mind? What happens when therapists are able to function as a sacred mirror for their clients’ essential nature, reflecting back not only the contents of awarenessùthoughts, feelings and sensationsùbut awareness itself? Informed by their direct experience as well as by nondual teachings from both eastern and western wisdom traditions, the authors take a fresh look at what psychotherapy can be. These seminal essays will challenge and inspire readers to approach psychotherapy in a new wayùas a potential portal for experiencing their deepest nature as free and joyful beings.

Endorsements

“This brilliant collection of essays introduces us to the most expansive of all human possibilities – the wisdom of unconditional mind. This is groundbreaking work, and of compelling interest to all psychotherapists exploring the potentials of Self.”
— Stephen Cope, LICSW, Senior Scholar, Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, author of Yoga and the Quest for the True Self and Will Yoga and Meditation Really Change Your Life?”

“The best presentation that I have ever read of both the theoretical reasons for introducing nondual spiritual understanding into psychotherapy as well as descriptions and instructions on how to do it.”
— Seymour Boorstein, M.D., author of Transpersonal Psychotherapy and Clinical Studies in Transpersonal Psychotherapy, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, Medical School

Listening from the Heart of Silence

How is modern psychotherapy impacted when it is approached from the presence and understanding of the unconditioned mind? What happens when therapists are able to function as a sacred mirror for their clients’ essential nature, reflecting back not only the contents of awarenessùthoughts, feelings and sensationsùbut awareness itself? Informed by their direct experience as well as by nondual teachings from both eastern and western wisdom traditions, the authors take a fresh look at what psychotherapy can be. These seminal essays will challenge and inspire readers to approach psychotherapy in a new wayùas a potential portal for experiencing their deepest nature as free and joyful beings.

Endorsements

“This exceptional anthology reflects the deepening confluence between timeless spiritual wisdom and Western psychological understanding. Bringing the spiritual insights of Zen, Tibetan Dzogchen, and Advaita Vedanta to bear on the practice of psychotherapy, the authors demonstrate how genuine nondual spiritual realization naturally applies itself in the therapeutic encounter. Most impressive is the fact that these are not religious scholars, but dedicated realizers and teachers whose work with students and clients is both healing and enlightening. Again and again, the separation between self and other inevitably breaks down as truth spontaneously moves to reveal itself through both therapist and client.”
— Stephan Bodian, MFT, psychotherapist, dharma teacher, and author of Meditation For Dummies and coauthor of Buddhism For Dummies

“What an immensely worthy sequel to the first volume in this series, The Sacred Mirror! Like its predecessor, Listening from the Heart of Silence, should be required study–not just reading–for anyone seriously interested in the integration of effective enlightenment spirituality and deep, truly healing psychotherapy. Every single essay is not just a gem but a mine of them.”
— Saniel Bonder, founder of the Waking Down in Mutuality work, author, Healing the Spirit/Matter Split, Waking Down: Beyond Hypermasculine Dharmas

“This book is at the same time a delight and strong medicine: a multi-faceted exploration of the relative and the absolute in the context of the therapy room, in language that manages to clarify rather than obscure this most subtle of subjects.”
— Roger Housden, author of the Ten Poems series; Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living; and editor of Dancing with Joy: 99 poems

“This is one of the best transpersonal guides to being, of which I am aware. Both professionals and clients will benefit from this volume’s acute evocation of mystery—and its startling power to heal.”
— Kirk Schneider, PhD, editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, author of The Handbook of Humanistic Psychology: Leading Edges in Theory, Research and Practice.

“Reading these pages is like witnessing the birth of a new, quintessentially American, wisdom tradition. The work of these authors may indeed represent a brilliant evolution of the entire field of mental health in America.”
— Anna Douglas, Ph.D., one of the founding teachers of Spirit Rock Meditation Center (Insight Meditation Society)

The Sacred Mirror (Dutch Version)

Wat is de invloed van een ongeconditioneerde geest op de moderne psychotherapie? Wat gebeurt er als therapeuten een ‘heilige spiegel’ zijn voor de essentiële natuur van hun cliënten en niet alleen de inhoud van gedachten, gevoelens en gewaarwordingen reflecteren, maar gewaarzijn zelf?